Texans cornerback's mother a two-time survivor of breast cancer

Cornerback Kareem Jackson and his mother, Rossalyn, a two-time breast cancer survivor, will enter Reliant Stadium before today's Texans game as proof that there indeed can be life after battling the disease.

Cornerback Kareem Jackson and his mother, Rossalyn, a two-time breast cancer survivor, will enter Reliant Stadium before today's Texans game as proof that there indeed can be life after battling the disease.

Photo: Brett Coomer, Staff

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Kareem Jackson and his mother, Rossalyn, can enjoy a lighter moment at Reliant Stadium after years of darker times when the Texans cornerback's sister and mom took turns taking on cancer - and winning.

Kareem Jackson and his mother, Rossalyn, can enjoy a lighter moment at Reliant Stadium after years of darker times when the Texans cornerback's sister and mom took turns taking on cancer - and winning.

Photo: Brett Coomer, Staff

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Kareem Jackson calls his tattooed left arm "my tribute wall to all the things that really made me in life." Foremost among them is a breast cancer ribbon.

Kareem Jackson calls his tattooed left arm "my tribute wall to all the things that really made me in life." Foremost among them is a breast cancer ribbon.

Photo: Brett Coomer, Staff

Texans cornerback's mother a two-time survivor of breast cancer

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Cancer and more cancer and near death. Pain, agony and confusion. Lost years, changed children, lives forever altered.

Rossalyn Jackson will collect it all, look into the bright eyes and strong face of her son, Texans cornerback Kareem Jackson, and let go. While fans file in Sunday at Reliant Stadium and Kareem's teammates are introduced amid the smoke, fire and cranked volume before a Week 6 contest against the St. Louis Rams, Rossalyn will trade two decades' worth of hurt and sickness for a few minutes of familial peace and pride.

Kareem will walk through the Texans' tunnel with his mother, who has fought off cancer in both breasts and will serve as the team's honorary home captain during national Breast Cancer Awareness month. Rossalyn's husband, Hezekiah, and daughter, Crystalynn, will watch from nearby. The tears that have alternately flowed and been held back since Kareem was a young child will pour out like never before.

"I'm going to need a bucket. Because I'm going to be crying - I know I am," Rossalyn said. "I just know those tears are going to flow. And they're going to be tears of joy."

Kareem listens to his mother's prediction. For one of the few times in his 25 years as a member of the Jackson family from Macon, Ga., the son will be the stronger one.

As the fourth-year Texan speaks, his right hand rubs his muscular left arm. The dark-brown skin is covered by ornate black script. The path to his mother's tears is buried within the words.

"This is my tribute wall to all the things that really made me in life," Kareem said.

There's the name of the neighborhood he grew up in. There are the names Rossalyn, Hezekiah and Crystalynn. About 12 inches away from a small bar code on Kareem's left hand, which is tattooed near the words "self made," there's a breast cancer ribbon for the mother who battled, conquered and survived.

"I've seen her go through a lot of things," Kareem said. "She's definitely the toughest woman that I know."

Different reactions

Rossalyn did what she was supposed to. She reached her 40s, had a mammogram and was cleared. The doctor said so.

But she never felt right. A lump in her breast wouldn't go away. Neither would her worry.

So Rossalyn returned to the doctor, not telling her family about the trip because she didn't want to cause concern. She expected to hear she simply had a cyst and needed to stop worrying.

It was 1995. She was 45. Cancer had arrived.

"I lost it in the office," Rossalyn said. "Finally got myself together and managed to tell my husband. He lost it."

Recalled Hezekiah: "I went to the doctor's office and I raised holy h-e-l-l. The nurses say, 'What's wrong with this man?' And I'd say, 'What are they doing to my wife?' "

Rossalyn withdrew while her husband attacked. Kareem just wondered. At 7, he was too young to know what cancer meant. He just knew his mother was seriously ill.

"The only thing you really think about is, 'Is mom going to make it?' " Kareem said.

Rossalyn eventually dug in, determined to destroy what was trying to end her life.

Psalms 30:5 rang true: "For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

She wouldn't lose this battle. She needed to be around for everything that followed.

"I had two children I had to raise, and I didn't want to leave them," Rossalyn said. "And after that, I put up my dukes and I was in for the ride."

Living at the hospital

Rossalyn raged and Hezekiah hollered because it wasn't fair. It also wasn't the first time.

Two years before Kareem's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, his sister began treatment for leukemia.

When Rossalyn's outpatient work began, Crystalynn was still going through inpatient life, regularly spending five days a week confined inside a hospital while cancer attacked her bone marrow.

"The first time you ever see cancer and it goes from your daughter's spine to her brain, it sets off a panic," Hezekiah said. "But you can't let anyone else see it, because you're the foundation and you have to keep everybody else strong."

Kareem was even younger when his sister's fight started. He hasn't forgotten anything.

Kareem would zoom around hospital corridors on a big wheel, terrorizing the staff. He'd sleep with his mother in a wheeled-in bed, staying as close to his sick sister as possible. He'd head to school from the hospital, then return to the closed-in walls, hard beds and impartial disease after another day was complete.

"The only time we went home was on the weekends," Kareem said. "And we went home on the weekends to pack more clothes for the next week."

When his sister was finally cancer-free - a breakthrough that followed a heartbroken Hezekiah seeing sunlight pour through opened curtains, then hearing a voice say his daughter would survive - there were still cruel childhood taunts about a hairless, weak little girl that awaited.

"We used to go to summer camps and all the kids saying these things. … I was just sitting there, watching her suffer," Kareem said.

Second round tougher

For 11 years, Kareem's mother knew what it meant to feel like almost everybody else. No pain. No cancer. A full, healthy life.

Then the disease returned. A different breast. The same symptoms. And the pain? Oh, my God.

"You've been on a merry-go round, you have a hangover and morning sickness rolled up in one. … It was to the point where I couldn't move for days," Rossalyn said.

Round one shook the post-leukemia Jacksons to their core. Round two was almost too much.

Kareem was in high school. Now, he knew what the disease meant. Rossalyn also knew what was coming. So she threw an immediate counterpunch, cutting off her hair before cancer treatments left her bald.

"That second go-around, that was the one that wiped me out completely," Rossalyn said. "And that's the one that he remembers the most, because he was older. He could actually see the physical effect it had on me."

Hezekiah knew how to react this time, having watched his family fight and overcome cancer twice. His wife's second battle against her body left him humbled.

Hezekiah grew up never meeting his own father, raised by a strong mother who was a single parent. In Rossalyn, he was surrounded by another woman of remarkable personal strength.

"A lot of her is in me," Hezekiah said. "I love her to death. She's my soulmate."

Another surgery to remove a lump followed. So did remission. For the second time in her life, Rossalyn beat breast cancer. But the scars from the last battle still show.

"I realized one day it was going to be over, and one day it was," said Rossalyn, a retired elementary school teacher who now takes care of her mother, who has dementia. "It took something out of me. You don't ever get the memory out - you don't ever forget it. It's a constant thing. I always think about it.

"But I go ahead and live my life."

Visit hits close to home

It was supposed to be another normal appearance. An athlete makes the rounds, smiles and waves at patients, briefly does good, then returns to an exclusive world. But this was Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.

Kareem had lived through and viewed it with his own eyes for years. He was seeing his sister all over again. And his mother. And he knew the cancer kids needed him.

"We took Kareem on a tour … and he became very quiet. He said, 'You know, this is bringing back a lot of memories because my sister is a cancer survivor,' " said Lynn Wheeler, associate director of Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Family Alliance.

Twenty Texans tickets, parking and food passes were soon in the hands of families for home games. Kareem visited more hospitals, gave out gifts during the holidays, participated in charity tournaments and threw a football with kids in the front yard when no one who counted charity appearances was watching.

Que Ford grabbed Kareem's heart. The young patient was being drained by a rare cancer. Kareem showed him a new world, allowing Que to walk through the Texans' locker room.

During the Texans' 38-14 home victory over Tennessee last season, Kareem collected his first career interception return for a touchdown. His team hit 4-0 for the first time in franchise history. Then a text message came through. Cancer had taken his 10-year-old friend Que's life.

Rossalyn twice overcame her disease. Crystalynn won once. But cancer is cancer, and Que didn't make it.

Kareem paused, briefly stumbled over his words, and began running one arm over the other, rolling across the tattooed wall of his cancer-filled life.

The Sept. 30, 2012, death is mentioned.

"That was definitely tough for me, because I had a great relationship with him and his family," Kareem said.

'A blessing for us'

Rossalyn used the same words as Kareem and Hezekiah to tell the Jacksons' story. There are unthinkable moments and horrific times. There's self-pity and familial sorrow. There are hospitals, doctors and diagnoses; sicknesses, curses and cures. There's cancer.

But there's also life. It has never stopped for the Jacksons. All four have endured and survived. Now, a mother, father and brother say the same thing. They would do it all over again. And they would do it the same exact way.

"It was definitely a blessing for us. It made us stronger, and we're here today," Kareem said. "You see us, we're just an ordinary family. You wouldn't even be able to tell that we went through some of those things."

Sunday's the climax in the Jacksons' cancer script. Kareem in uniform. Father and daughter watching. Rossalyn waiting to take her son's hand, then being saluted for winning two battles in two breasts.

Kareem swears he won't cry. Rossalyn won't even pretend. She'll need a bucket. Maybe two. And all of her pain and her family's trials will wash away in front of tens of thousands who have showed up just to watch a game.

"Be prepared for the tears," Rossalyn said. "Get ready for the tears."